Sacred (16 page)

It was too difficult to stand. Still drunk and dizzy, I lowered myself to sit Indian-style on the floor of the tub and let the water course over me. It swirled down the drain, greenish at first, as the spray from my hair and face rinsed away, but eventually it was clear.

I sat there numbly, shivering in spite of the water’s heat, wondering several times if I was going to puke again. It was a definite possibility, but at last I determined that I was going to keep it together, and I turned the water off and climbed gingerly from the tub.

In my room, the best I could manage before collapsing was to pull back the covers. Then I fell onto my pillow, still naked from the shower, my damp towel dropped on the floor next to me. But sleep would not come; the room spun behind my closed eyes, and I felt the heat from my shower seeping out of me. I was cold again, and restless.

I imagined Will downstairs, in a guest room. Was he awake too? If so, was he staring out at the storm, or was he lying in the dark, eyes focused on nothing?

Sleep was not coming anytime soon. Emboldened by my lingering drunkenness, I pulled on my jeans and a sweatshirt
and slipped as quietly as I could from my room, trying to tiptoe past my parents’ room, though I had to lean heavily on the wall to keep my balance.

Downstairs, I followed a dim glow from underneath the door of the Yellow Room. I swallowed, and smoothed my hair, damp and heavy over my shoulders. I raised my hand to knock, but before I did, Will’s voice greeted me—“Come in.”

He was sitting in front of the fireplace, and he’d built a fire. Its orange glow cast tricky shadows on the walls. Will sat in one of the two chairs in front of the fireplace, and when I came in, standing awkwardly and fidgeting with my hair in the doorway, Will gestured for me to join him in the other chair.

I tripped over the edge of the rug and stumbled into the chair. Will laughed a little and shook his head. “Still drunk, huh?”

“A little.”

We sat in silence before the fire. Will stared into the flames; I stared at him. I had so many questions, but all of them started with the same word—Why?

Why had he come to the party? Why had he come to my house that one morning? Why had he been waiting for me outside the girls’ bathroom? And why, why had he come to me that day on the trail?

At last, Will looked away from the fire and met my gaze. We looked at each other for a long moment, and this time I was the one to look away into the fire.

“Scarlett,” he said softly, “can you keep a secret?”

Biting my lip, I nodded. Secrets were what I did best.

“Ever since we met, Scarlett—even
before
we met—I’ve felt this strange pull toward you.”

It was ridiculous how happy those words made me feel. I tried to tell myself that I was relieved to know I hadn’t been making it all up, turning a string of coincidences into something meaningful, but there was more to it than that. He’d felt a pull toward me.

“Do you know why I’m here, Scarlett, on your island?”

“I know your mom … died … a few years ago. I figured your move had something to do with that. You know, like your dad wanting a change of scenery or something.” I felt shy, suddenly, mentioning his mother—and nervous, too. Talking about his dead mother was just a step away from talking about my dead brother, and I didn’t think I could handle that.

“Or something,” Will agreed. “I’m sure my dad did think it would be good for both of us to get away. But not just to escape our memories, though I’d bet that figured more strongly into Dad’s decision than he’d be willing to admit. My dad’s an interesting guy, Scarlett. You’ll see for yourself when you meet him.”

I flushed with pleasure, hoping my face was hidden by the half-light of the room. He wanted me to meet his father.

“See, Scarlett, things are different for me.” Here he paused, pursing his lips as if considering whether he should really continue. I realized my hands were gripping each other tightly, anxious for him to tell me more. I slid my chair closer and curled my legs under me, leaning in toward him. The fire warmed my hair, drying it.

When Will looked at me, his green eyes burned as fiercely
as any fire. “I’ve never told anyone this, Scarlett, except for my dad, and I’m not really sure I should be telling you. But secrets … they eat you up, if you hold them too long.” His look was almost pleading, as if he was asking for my permission.

I reached across the distance that separated us and rested my hand on his. Even though his hand was warm, I shivered a little when we touched. The sensation that seemed to jolt through me was so powerful that there was no way I could deny it, no way he didn’t feel it too.

Will flipped his hand over so that we were palm to palm. As easy as melted butter, our fingers interlaced. He squeezed my hand, and a measure of the torture that had colored his expression seeped away.

“Ah,” he said. “That’s better.”

Our hands connected, and the shock I’d felt upon our first touch surged between us like a current whose circuit had been completed. My drunken dizziness faded to almost nothing and I felt so present, so
alive
, that I could have stayed just like that, fingers entwined with Will’s, for the rest of my days.

“I have this … thing,” he said. His voice was so low, almost a whisper, that I leaned in even closer to hear him. My hair fell like a curtain between us and the fire. We were in a very private little room. Will closed his eyes as if the telling would be easier if he didn’t see his audience. His head tipped forward; so did mine, and our foreheads touched. “I don’t know why, or how,” he confessed. “But I am drawn to … I feel the need to …”

He couldn’t seem to finish a sentence. I squeezed his fingers to give him courage.

“When something bad is going to happen, somewhere, I have this sensation of impending danger. I’m
pulled
, I guess, to locations where something bad—violent—is going to happen.”

He fell silent then, but it wasn’t a restful silence. I could tell he was waiting for my reaction. Would I pull away? Would I call him a liar?

But I knew, without question, that his words were absolutely true. Will Cohen was not a liar. How did I know this? I couldn’t say. But I knew, as sure as my breath, that he spoke the truth.

“It started a few years ago, not long after my mom died,” he said with an air of confession. “The first time I didn’t have any idea what was happening. I woke up in the middle of the night, just after my thirteenth birthday. It was like there was a hook in my brain”—here he leaned back from me and touched his forehead in the disarmingly beautiful gesture I’d come to know of him—“and it pulled me like a fish on a line through the dark streets of the city.”

He sat back in his chair now so he could see me as he talked. I understood; once you start telling your secret, its lock on you loosens and the words come faster, more easily. Our hands, still entwined, rested together on his knee.

“I wandered down streets I didn’t know and found myself in an alley, a place I’d never been. I couldn’t tell you the route I took. But I kept speeding up until I was running. When I got to that alley, I stopped. The pulling feeling was
gone, replaced with this sense of anticipation, but the hook was still there, ready to reel me in if I tried to leave. I waited, knowing for sure that something was about to happen. And I was going to have to stop it.”

“Go on.”

“I didn’t have to wait long. I heard them before I saw them. There was a whimpering sound and a man’s deep voice. As they rounded the corner into the alley, I stepped back into a shadow. They knew each other, that was clear, because the girl—she was probably about twenty or so—was begging him by name to stop. It seemed like he was enjoying her cries, like they were actually urging him on. He had a knife to her throat, and he pushed her up against the brick wall and reached under her skirt, pulling off her underwear. Suddenly, all I could see was this pulsing, rage-filled light, and I knew I had to help. There was a bottle on the ground, and I picked it up and smashed it against the wall. I pointed it at the guy and yelled at him to leave her alone.”

I remembered the party at Andy’s, the way Will had stridden into the room with such intention, such purpose, and I pulled his hand into my lap and squeezed his fingers.

“He must have just been startled to find that he wasn’t alone in the alley. I was just a skinny kid—I’d barely bar mitzvahed, even—but he flinched, just long enough for the girl to kick him, hard, in the groin. He dropped his knife, and she and I both ran, fast, leaving him there behind us.

“The girl ran one way, and I ran the other. It was like, as soon as I’d helped her, the hook in my brain disappeared, and I was free to go. I ran home, scared to death that the guy
would follow me. He didn’t, and somehow I made it home, though I didn’t know the way. My dad was still sleeping. In the morning, I tried to convince myself that the whole thing had been a crazy dream. I didn’t really believe that, of course, but how else could I explain it?”

It was silent now outside. The rain had stopped. The fire had consumed itself and was just embers.

Will seemed to be waiting for me to say something. I didn’t know which question to ask first. Finally I said, “Is it always … you know, girls who you have to save?”

He shook his head. “No, but there are more of those than you’d believe. Sometimes it’s a fight gone wrong, or a parent beating his kid. Every now and then it’s something even stranger—things I wouldn’t like to tell you. But it’s always a crime, and a violent one. Robberies, accidents, destruction of property … those don’t speak to me.”

“So you were … called to me tonight?” My voice was uncertain, shaky. “But I asked for it, Will. I’d told him I would.”

Will shook his head, angry. “No one asks for that, Scarlett. No one has the right to … I saw, Scarlett. You were trying to push him off.”

My eyes burned. “But I’d told him before …”

“That doesn’t matter. That doesn’t count. It was pretty clear what you were telling him then, in the bedroom. And it wasn’t yes.”

The tears spilled down my cheeks. I hoped Will wouldn’t see them, but the sun was beginning to rise and our room glowed faintly in its light.

He reached out, so gently, and wiped away my tears with his thumb. “It’s okay,” he said, his voice rough. “I was there.”

I nodded and took a deep breath. “Thank you,” I whispered.

“You’re welcome.”

The room turned pink in the sunrise, and I felt the press of our time running out. Daddy was an early riser; he’d be up soon.

My question came out in a rush. “But what about the other times? On the trail? Outside the bathroom at school? I wasn’t in danger then.”

Will shook his head. “I don’t know. The first time I came to you, out on the trail, it was the first time since we came to the island that I had that familiar hook-in-the-brain feeling. I found myself pulled to the trail, and then you showed up. There was something different, though. You weren’t in any danger, not that I could see. And there was no one else out there; you were all alone. Even if you would have fallen from your horse—”

“I never fall from Delilah.”

“Even if you had, I don’t feel pulled to accidents. Only violent crimes. So there was no reason that I should have been out there, on the trail.”

“But you were.”

“And afterward, I was hit with one of my headaches.”

“Your headaches?”

Will nodded. “If I don’t respond to the fishhook pull, or if I don’t try to stop the crime, I get the worst headache you could imagine. Like a migraine, I guess. Blinding pain for days, makes me want to bang my head into a wall.”

“That’s why you stumbled off like that,” I murmured.

“It’s different with you, Scarlett. It doesn’t matter
where
you are. The pull is never to a place. It’s to
you
. It’s as if your body is the crime scene.”

My stomach lurched. I imagined my yellow notebook, tucked beneath my bed. I thought of the thin scar across my wrist.

Will looked at me as if waiting for me to say something. Finally, I raised my shoulders in an unconvincing shrug and looked away.

I knew we were out of balance now. Will had shared his secret with me, and I hadn’t reciprocated. His fingers loosened, and he withdrew his hand.

There was emptiness where there had been warmth. But unlike the raw, cored-out feeling I craved, this emptiness was just … empty. Sad.

Will got up and walked over to the window. He pulled open the drapes and stood with his back to me, so I couldn’t see his expression when he talked.

“I don’t know about you, Scarlett, but I was raised with a certain outlook on life. In my faith, we’re taught that all of us are connected. And each of us has a responsibility to the others. Whether we like it or not. The things we do matter … sometimes they matter far more than we can know.”

I didn’t like where this was headed. “If all of us are responsible to everyone, how could any of us ever move?” I argued. “It would be paralyzing! If I walk to the left, I risk causing someone to suffer. If I go right, maybe someone else falls off a cliff.”

“You’re being ridiculous.”

Of course I was, but I didn’t like Will telling me so. “So you’re telling me you’re just thrilled to bits to be saddled with this gift of yours? You
like
having to drop everything and head off like some superhero?”

“I hate it,” Will whispered. “Sometimes I try to ignore it, but—I’m too weak.”

A flash of insight struck me. “That’s why you’re on this island,” I accused. “You came here to hide from what you can do, is that it?”

Will nodded. “After my mother died and then this … thing … started with me and it just kept getting stronger, my father couldn’t stand the thought of losing me as well. So here we are—insulated by miles of uninterrupted Pacific Ocean from the nearest big city. My father put his whole life on hold to try to keep me safe from myself.” He laughed, but not as if he found it funny. “Imagine how upset he was when I came back that day from the trail and he saw me, completely wrecked.”

“What do you mean, wrecked?”